Why This Inmate Chose the Electric Chair Over Lethal Injection

Mr. Sutton, 58, was sentenced to loss of life for his involvement in the killing of Carl Estep, another inmate in the prison where by Mr. Sutton, who was 23 at the time, was incarcerated. He had been convicted of initially-degree murder for knocking unconscious his grandmother, who had raised him, and throwing her into a river. He been given two other everyday living sentences soon after he confessed to killing a pair of adult males, John Huge and Charles Almon.

In an appeal for clemency, Mr. Sutton’s legal professionals depicted his transformation more than extra than 35 many years in prison. The mother of a fellow inmate who had untreated several sclerosis reported Mr. Sutton experienced comforted her son and even carried him, they explained. Corrections officers also mentioned they “owed their lives” to him for rescuing them from currently being attacked by other inmates.

“He put my safety and well-becoming previously mentioned his very own,” one corrections formal, Tony Eden, wrote in an op-ed released in The Tennessean, in which he also called Mr. Sutton the “most rehabilitated inmate I have at any time regarded.”

“Simply place,” he added, “the prison will be safer with Sutton serving lifetime than it would be if he is executed.”

Mr. Sutton also sought to place off his execution by arguing, between other items, that he had been improperly shackled in entrance of jurors though on demo. But the Tennessee Supreme Court docket rejected his claims, indicating in a ruling previous Friday that “Mr. Sutton has unsuccessful to show a chance of accomplishment on the merits of the litigation in each matters.”

With his execution scheduled for Thursday night, Mr. Sutton was moved on Tuesday into demise look at at the Riverbend Greatest Security Establishment, a facility in Nashville positioned in a crook of the Cumberland River that houses Tennessee’s dying row for gentlemen.

He was placed below 24-hour observation in a cell adjoining the execution chamber, permitted to have his toiletries, 12 sheets of stationery, 3 stamped envelopes and a pencil that he ought to return to a correctional officer anytime he is not employing it. There, he awaited the governor’s determination on whether to carry out his execution, which arrived Wednesday.

“After very careful thing to consider of Nicholas Sutton’s request for clemency and a complete overview of the scenario,” Mr. Lee claimed in a assertion, “I am upholding the sentence of the Point out of Tennessee and will not be intervening.”